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Monday morning and the students are calling me over to the Discovery Table. They are excited about the celery! Over the weekend it drank all the water and we inspected the mud. ROOTS! Look in the lower left hand corner of the picture. Sure enough, adding dirt helped the plant grow roots. Now it is time to add all our findings to our journals.

Science is everywhere. A scientist is a scientific investigator, often thought to be skilled in natural science, but there are many fields to study! You merely have to ask a question and search for an answer. The process you go through will make you a scientist.

Watching plants grow facilitates the scientific method. Our question this week was, will celery regrow after the stalks are cut off. Some said no, throw it away. Several children thought maybe it would and others were not willing to take a guess. We placed the end of the celery stalk in a shallow bowl of water and each morning recorded the changes that were observed.

Day one: Not much change, but the top looked dry. The students wanted to take droppers and drop water on top of the celery.

Day two: There was a change, but it was hard to define. Someone remarked that the celery no longer looks flat on top and maybe it was green in color.

Day three: The center of the celery looked fuzzy.

Day four: There is a definite change! Tiny leaves are growing out of the center and some of the smaller stalks are getting taller.

Day five: The plant is growing! Examining the whole plant, the students were disappointed to find that the roots are not growing. WHY?

What will we do? Should we add dirt? Does it need more or less water? Why had it only grown ¼ of an inch yesterday and ½ of an inch today? NOW the students are asking questions and ready to make predictions. They are developing problem-solving skills while becoming comfortable with exploring the world around them. They are learning how each person can be a scientist!